Trends in Print and Mail

"To live wonder-smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live." - Maria Popova

As my friends and clients know, I have systems for tracking many of my activities. For books, I have two systems – an MS Access Database and posting on Goodreads. The database allows me to track different categories, quickly organize by title or author, and create the content for a page on my website.

To choose my “top books for 2025”, I narrowed my reading list to only those that I gave a 5-star rating on Goodreads. Many of the books I read were published years ago; sometimes many, many years ago. My tastes range from history to poetry to science to social commentary. And sometimes I read books that involve mail. (Note: I do read fiction, but rarely do any of those books rate 5 stars.)

In alphabetical order by author, here are the thirteen books I most enjoyed in 2025.

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“Look before, or you’ll find yourself behind.”  January 1735

Benjamin Franklin’s success as a printer, postmaster general, and politician assured his place in history. Yet he was also a scientist and inventor.

He demonstrated that lightning was electrical in nature, and used that information to invent the lightning rod. He studied the Gulf Stream (actually naming it), and charted its course. The Frankling stove improved the efficiency of heating the home, and is still in use today. And some of us of a certain age appreciate his work in optics, including the invention of bifocals.

These discoveries and inventions, now considered basic knowledge in our society, were cutting edge technologies. By pushing the boundaries of what was known, Franklin changed the lives of people in the 18th century, and we still feel the impact in the present.

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